Rotary Reverie: 35 Years on the C/D Wankel-Engine Racing Beat

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Chasing Checkers in the Days of Malaise

Historians often disparage the 1970s and early ’80s as the automotive world’s malaise days—when government regulations and the insurance lobby conspired to snuff out muscle cars, catching Detroit with its engineering and marketing pants down. Corvette engine output plummeted to 165 horsepower, and General Motors threatened to retire V-8s. Those things happened, no kidding.

Car and Driver editors never cast a frown during this period because we were besieged by fortuitous opportunities. This is when the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) created showroom-stock sedan racing, beckoning us to driving school and motorsports. Japanese manufacturers imported a windfall of small, cheap cars and trucks. But what made this a memorable chapter in C/D history began on the
West Coast as the perfect whirlwind.

As Mazda began revving up its Wankel rotary engine in earnest, two entrepreneurs—engineer Jim Mederer and businessman Ryusuke Oku—pooled resources to open Racing Beat, the first U.S. enterprise devoted to advancing rotary-powered performance. The following unforgettable experiences ensued.

By Don Sherman

It Started Because of a Carburetor

Executive editor Patrick Bedard recognized the rotary engine’s emergence as the ideal opportunity to take readers on the ride of their lives. Anxious to take a step up the motorsports ladder from showroom stock to the budding IMSA RS (racing stock) series, Bedard convinced our squinty-eyed purse minders that funds invested in a racing program would reap untold editorial benefits. When they reluctantly agreed, the green flag dropped on the excellent adventures that follow.

Bedard selected a 1973 Mazda RX-2 as our IMSA road-racing weapon of choice, not because it was rotary powered but because it was the only eligible model equipped with a four-barrel carburetor. The rest of the field was stuck sucking air and fuel through smaller one- or two-barrel straws.
California’s Roy Woods Racing was commissioned to equip our racer with a stout roll cage, the best available competition seat, and appropriate safety gear. Racing Beat pumped Mazda’s 70-cubic-inch two-rotor 12A Wankel engine from a stock 95 horsepower to a potent 198 stallions stampeding at 8400 rpm.

In 1973, Bedard earned pole position in our first race at Pocono. Unfortunately, we snatched humiliation from the jaws of victory when our Rotary Racer’s differential failed the instant the green flag waved.

By Don Sherman

First to Race a Rotary to Victory

Sensing we were on to something and responding to whining from our fellow competitors, IMSA preemptively piled on 300 pounds of ballast to keep a bunch of newbie journos (us) from running away with the laurels. That exacerbated the RX-2’s Achilles’ heel: brakes barely able to halt a baby carriage, let alone a heavy, fast road racer.

Nonetheless, when the dust settled at the end of C/D’s inaugural season, our racer had earned three poles, the first ever victory in America for a rotary-powered car, another win, and a third place in the driver’s championship (for Bedard). As if to assure that our buzz bomb never returned, IMSA banned the intake-port modification crucial to the rotary engine’s vitality.

But return it did. Subsequent owner Walt Bohren revived our car in 1976 to win eight races between 1976 and ’78 as well as the 1978 IMSA RS championship. (More favorable rules were instrumental to that cause.) Following our April 2007 project-racer reunion with a Ford Pinto we had also campaigned in IMSA, C/D’s Mazda RX-2 joined Mazda’s prize collection of historically significant racers in California, where it resides, still.

By Don Sherman

Salting the Tale

Next, we tried a different form of racing where weak brakes pose no handicap. With help from Mazda and Racing Beat, the Car and Driver garage constructed an RX-3 coupe powered by a larger, 80-cubic-inch 13B rotary from Mazda’s RX-4 to challenge the 139.137-mph G-Production class record on the Bonneville Salt Flats.

This seemed like the classic slam dunk. Our IMSA road racer had already run 139 mph at Daytona with a smaller and less powerful engine. For this go, Racing Beat pumped up the Mazda rotary to 280 horsepower at an ear-stinging 9000 rpm. To cut drag within the confines of the rules, we evaluated front and rear spoilers, a lower ride height, spun-disc wheel covers, and five different air-induction configurations. Each candidate mod was fitted to an RX-3 borrowed from the press-car pool and tested on a remote Long Island public road.

Our shakedown pass on the first day of Southern California Timing Association runs slapped us in the face with this harsh reality: breaking speed records takes preparation, patience, and luck. What we brought in the first requirement, we desperately lacked in the remaining essentials.

By Don Sherman

Agony en Route to 160.4 MPH

After agreeing on a 7500-rpm redline to feel out salt conditions, I came within 4 mph of the record on the first pass but suffered a severe power loss at the two-mile marker. A second run with fresh spark plugs yielded a 78-mph terminal speed. Engine maestro Jim Mederer studied the situation for an hour before declaring our Wankel engine fatally wounded.

After identifying this fault late in the week and reassembling the wounded engine by pressing our motel room’s sink and tub into service as cleaning tanks for parts, we found the speed. On the last day of Speed Week in 1974, we logged two-direction runs with the now happy rotary singing at 9050 rpm through the measured mile. Our average 160.393-mph speed topped the G-Production record by 21 mph.

By Don Sherman

Re-Assaulting the Salt

Did we mention that Salt Fever is a benign disease with no cure? Four years later (1978), we returned to Bonneville after Mazda released the RX-7 as the new bullet casing for its rotary-engine ammo. Using an 80-cubic-inch 13B in place of the stock 70-cubic inch, 100-hp 12A engine upped the caliber of our threat to 326 horsepower. Key Racing Beat mods were peripheral intake ports fed by a huge Weber carburetor and exotic aluminum-impregnated-carbon apex seals. A drag chute was fitted just in case the need to straighten a high-speed wobble cropped up. Shakedown runs at 175 mph were conducted before Speed Week on Mrs. Orcutt’s long and unpatrolled driveway spanning a dry lake near Barstow, California. At the salt, our target was the 167.208-mph E/GT record held by a Chevy Corvette.

Off the trailer, I ran 173 mph but suffered a disintegrated rotor bearing in the timing traps, our second bout of the Bonneville Agony. After an overnight engine swap, we were back for more on Speed Week’s Monday morning. Forty seconds running at over 10,000 rpm in two directions earned our second record book entry. Adding a rear spoiler we believed might be worth a few more mph necessitated additional qualifying and record runs. The last pair of passes averaged 183.904 mph, earning a new E/GT record in Car and Driver’s and Racing Beat’s names.

By Don Sherman

An Inning in the Big Leagues

Not screwing up at Bonneville earned Car and Driver a seat in Racing Beat’s Mazda RX-7 entered in IMSA’s GTU road racing class at the 1979 24 Hours of Daytona. Co-driving with Jim Mederer and Jeff Kline, I faced a distinguished 67-car field that included two factory RX-7s in GTU, plus the likes of Jacky Ickx, Brian Redman, Paul Newman, Hurley Haywood, and Danny Ongais in Porsche 935s. Patrick Bedard scored a ride in the NART Ferrari 512BB fielded by the Chinettis and co-driven by Jean-Pierre Delaunay and Bob Tullius.

By Don Sherman

Photos By ISC Archive via Getty Images

A Landmark Race

This was a truly epic event remembered for its remarkable finish. While running 50 laps ahead of a Ferrari 365GTB/4 owned by Otto Zipper—who had died peacefully in his hotel room the night before the race—Ongais’s Interscope Porsche 935 (in this photo) cooked its turbocharger. The flyin’ Hawaiian parked his racer 150 yards from the finish line 10 minutes before the clock struck 24 hours, restarting the engine just in time to take the checkered flag at walking speed. Enhancing the drama, a cloud of white oil smoke trailed the red, white, and black Porsche, which, in spite of its distress, set new Daytona 24-hour speed and distance records.

While the Zipper Ferrari team, which ran with a commemorative black stripe across its hood, could have protested Interscope’s win on a technicality, members graciously chose not to in the interest of sportsmanship.

By Don Sherman

Photos By ISC Archive via Getty Images

NART So Great

C/D drivers fared less well. Bedard drove exactly seven practice laps in the NART Ferrari (shown in this photo). Shortly before his race stint was scheduled to begin, a co-driver suffered a tire blowout in the banking, resulting in a terminal crash. Bedard never got onto the track during the race.

By Don Sherman

Photos By ISC via Getty Images

A 21-Hour Thrash

Due to time constraints, the Racing Beat RX-7’s preparation was short of this organization’s exemplary standards. Our differential burned out three and a half hours into the race, followed by the engine’s demise before the halfway mark. Team wrenches overcame those hitches, but three hours before the event’s end, a weld in the rear axle housing failed, parking the car for good.

By Don Sherman

Photos By Wayne Ellwood

Not for Naught

Before the DNF, we logged 393 laps on Daytona’s road course, earning 28th place on the final-results list. The fastidiously prepped Mazda factory RX-7s finished a faultless 1-2 in the GTU class and an impressive fifth and sixth overall. The following year, Racing Beat regrouped, lead-piping GTU competition with a two-car effort that won eight of the 1980 season’s 12 races and the series championship (the photo above is from the Road America round of the series).

At the ’79 Daytona race, I spent five hours at the wheel, loving every minute. My favorite takeaway is a photo of my white RX-7 gently oversteering while leading the indomitable Ongais out of an infield turn. In spite of earplugs and a well-padded helmet, I was left deaf for two days by the unmuffled rotary’s shriek. I bear no regrets. My modest role in the RX-7’s first major road-racing trial will someday be worth sharing with grandkids.

By Don Sherman

In the Longer Run

A mere six months later, relief for our Daytona dénouement arrived. Owners of the dilapidated Nelson Ledges (Ohio) road course created the Longest Day event as the Le Mans for amateurs. We sold editor-in-chief David E. Davis, Jr., on the concept and convinced Mazda Motors USA contacts that this “concentrated durability test” was a spectacular opportunity.

We selected the number 25 to decorate our RX-7, drawn from Mazda’s press pool for this twice-around-the-clock showroom-stock race, in honor of Car and Driver’s 25th birthday. The five-man driver roster ranged from racing virgin Larry Griffin to reigning F1 world driving champion Jody Scheckter, and also included yours truly, Rich Ceppos, and Patrick Bedard. At the last instant, Scheckter bowed out, although his name remained on our car to rattle the competition.

Our secret weapon was Csaba Csere, still a Ford Motor Company engineer, heading a crack pit crew consisting of his most capable, tireless, and obedient work colleagues. The Wood Brothers could not have done better.

By Don Sherman

Fuelishness at Nelson

All too familiar with Mazda’s miniature rear drum-type brakes, we implemented a lift-early, brake-lightly strategy. We qualified second and completed the race with no front-brake-pad or rear-lining service. We failed to discover until the event was underway that we had a fuel-pickup problem. It proved to be our undoing. In the course’s long left carousel, our rotary engine stumbled due to interrupted fuel delivery when the level in the 14.5-gallon tank dropped below nine gallons.

The math was this simple: We drove quickly and carefully, stopping 18 times for fuel and tire replacement. Except for a red glow deep inside its exhaust pipe, our rotary engine showed no evidence of stress. Twenty-one cars started the race, 14 finished, three rolled, and four succumbed to mechanical issues. We logged the quickest lap in the final hour with an 83-mph average on the 2.0-mile course.

Unfortunately, a Saab 900 Turbo requiring only 12 fuel stops beat us in the pits and to the checkers by three laps. Worse, two of the four drivers on that team were Road & Track editors. Our consolation was $1750 in prize money, which cut our costs to $86.25 per hour of racing.

It’s a Keeper

Heated Recaro seats trimmed in pigskin and velour, a Nardi steering wheel, and extra gauges enhanced the cockpit. I also installed one of the first touch-sensitive radios and an aftermarket trip computer in the center dash and added a console keypad to secure the electric fuel pump’s operation. Mazda Motorsports front and rear spoilers and mirrors pirated from a Dodge Colt decorated the exterior.

Dubbed the Technical Director’s Toy, my project car was quick enough to beat tech editor Csaba Csere’s ’74 Porsche 911 in the daily Race Home from Work GP. Thirty-seven years later, this RX-7 still enjoys front-row parking in my garage.

By Don Sherman

Back to Bonneville

After Mazda introduced the second-generation (FC) RX-7 with a turbo rotary in 1985, we had the perfect excuse for a third trip to Bonneville. You know the routine: Mazda provided moral support, Racing Beat constructed the speed machine, and Car and Driver shared the experience with our devout readers.

Using engine components originally engineered in Japan for GTP competition, Racing Beat added Bosch fuel injection, two Hitachi turbos, dry-sump lubrication, and an innovative intercooler system incorporating a 25-gallon trunk-mounted ice-water reservoir as the heat exchanger. The driveline featured a $6000 five-speed transmission and a custom-built spiral-bevel 2.00:1 final drive with no differential.

Armed with 14.7 pounds of boost and 530 horsepower at 8500 rpm, we aimed for the 201.213 mph C/GT record. Before Speed Week, Jim Mederer circulated C/D’s Rotary Rocket around the Ohio Transportation Research Center’s oval at an encouraging 231 mph.

By Don Sherman

Mr. Mederer Is Not Amused

Of course it wouldn’t be Bonneville without a dose or two of heartache. Taking it easy on the first pass, I ran 151 mph, entering these observations to the logbook: “Easy rear [wheel] spin, wobbly over 100 mph.” The first two miles of salt were chewed and rutted like a heavy-traffic thoroughfare crippled by a snowstorm. Traction and stability concerns limited my second pass to 155 mph. The third try, which required slaloming around blown-engine debris deposited by a competitor, clocked 177 mph. Not only was that too slow to qualify for a record attempt, I also turned off course early with my engine in a severe state of distress.

Monday was spent replacing that engine and adding ballast at the tail of the car in hopes of improved traction. A Tuesday pass at 229 mph with the engine splitting the sound barrier lifted our spirits. I adopted a strategy of driving judiciously through the rough salt and saving full throttle for the last three miles to achieve maximum velocity through the timing traps.

On the record attempt, that felt good while it lasted. Then, in fourth gear under full throttle, one rear tire, then the other snapped its tenuous grip with the salt. Backing off the throttle with a full head of boost under the hood had no effect, and the car began a slow, uncorrectable counterclockwise pirouette. At 200 mph. I yanked the parachute release just in time to keep the car from helicoptering into the air. Our December 1986 cover story succinctly summed up the situation: “Mr. Mederer is not amused by my escapades.”

By Don Sherman

Not So Easy

The required Nomex driver’s suit, gloves, boots, and face mask comprise the ensemble worn by Top Fuel drag racers. While that equipment is tolerable for a 300-mph run requiring only a few seconds, imagine being cooked in this brazier while the car waits in line before runs lasting minutes. With no synchros in the gearbox, 12 gauge readings to remember, and a touchy clutch, I had my work cut out.

Half a ton of wet salt that was packed under the car after the big slide supported my case that the course itself was “challenging.” Then, that evening, we were ordered out of our motel rooms because carbon monoxide had somehow infiltrated the air-conditioning system. The fearful obediently traipsed to the parking lot. I switched off my room’s A/C, opened windows, and slept fitfully to prepare for Wednesday’s velocity fest.

By Don Sherman

The 200-MPH Club

Lady Luck finally took a ride with us. The day was bright, the salt was drier, and I was authorized to use 8000 rpm for a qualifying pass. The engine pulled so hard under full throttle in fifth that I had to feather the pedal to stabilize the tach needle at 8100 rpm. The timing stand reported 232.753 mph, advancing us halfway to the record book.

Team management lifted my rpm limit to go for broke on the return pass. The engine screamed smoothly, sweetly, and assertively to 8550 rpm, worth 244.132 mph for a two-way average of 238.442 mph. That speed rush—quicker than a Concorde SST at liftoff—was something too good to share with grandkids.

I was elated to receive my 200-MPH Club cap, but Mederer knew there was more to be had. Shifting our focus to a 207-mph Modified Sports class record, we adopted a different strategy: adding turbo boost incrementally until we achieved 250 mph in hopes of giving our Japanese benefactors full 400-km/h bragging rights.

Alas, it was not to be. Late Wednesday, the heavens split, and the flats reverted to a not-so-great salt lake. Our 1986 Speed Week ended after exactly three and a half days.

By Don Sherman

Open for Business

Compared to long and short racing indulgences with speeds topping 200 mph, the California Roadster built by Racing Beat and celebrated on our February 1988 cover seems sedate. Tuned to produce 241 horsepower and topping out at 144 mph, its performance seems modest by today’s standards, although it was stunning in its day.

Instead of waiting for Mazda to produce a convertible version of the second-generation RX-7, Racing Beat simply constructed one from the ground up using only those factory body panels deemed appropriate to its topless cause. This led to a total abandonment of any roof, sound deadening, undercoating, HVAC equipment, side windows, power steering assist, and the factory doors. Lighter fiberglass doors intended for racing RX-7s provided convenient entry and exit to the two-seat cockpit. Tubular reinforcements, a taller driveline tunnel, and seam welds in lieu of the factory spot welds were incorporated to achieve the desired structural stiffness. A custom fiberglass nose cone adorned with dark corner lights and a nicely integrated rear wing gave this one-off a look distinctive from the factory design. Shiny Enkei wheels shod with shaved Goodyear Eagle tires were a nod to equipment fitted to Racing Beat’s 238-mph Rotary Rocket.

By Don Sherman

Another Survivor

Engine tweaks included additional turbo boost, a low-restriction exhaust system, and a means of showering the intercooler’s surface with water during moments of peak demand. Thirty percent or more gains in power and torque over stock combined with a curb weight 530 pounds lower than Mazda’s naturally aspirated convertible yielded 5.6-second zero-to-60 mph acceleration with a 14-second-flat quarter-mile at 101 mph. While the use of a recalibrated four-speed automatic transmission seemed like the anemic approach, it saved the weight and complication of providing clutch-actuation linkage.

When Racing Beat’s California Roadster served as the centerpiece for our February 1988 issue devoted to the day’s convertible creativity, it was still a work in progress. Rear-suspension experimentation was underway, and the special body components were just beginning to migrate into the maker’s accessory catalogue. Nearly two decades later, this project car remains in Racing Beat’s possession, still humming sweet rotary tunes and smiling back at Southern California admirers.

By Don Sherman

Racing Ugly

Car and Driver has been a charter member and committed participant in the 24 Hours of LeMons endurance racing series since chief perp Jay Lamm flagged off the first event at California’s Altamont Motorsports Park in 2006. Any car with a purchase price not exceeding $500 that passes a rudimentary safety inspection is eligible for competition. Of course, the essential roll cage, fire extinguisher, driver restraints, and racing seat expenses add to the cost; these races also consume brake pads, rotors, suspension parts, tires, fuel, oil, and the occasional fender.

Seven editors and a few close allies handled long driving stints in the three events we campaigned in 2007. While outright victory eluded us, we did score three respectable finishes: third out of 83 starters at Altamont; second at the Flat Rock, Michigan, track, located mere miles from our office; and sixth in the 50-car field at Thunderhill Raceway near Willows, California. Well pummeled during its LeMons career, our venerable RX-7 earned its trip to the shredder ages ago. That is, except for its aluminum hood, still wearing the ’91 Le Mans livery, which is proudly displayed at our Ann Arbor, Michigan, editorial offices.

By Don Sherman

What Next for the Wankel?

While the foregoing history lesson is not intended to serve as the rotary engine’s memorial, the truth is that we’re not sure Mazda’s Wankel will ever recover from its current moribund state. Work is allegedly proceeding on a turbocharged 16X design worth 500 or more horsepower. Will such an engine leave the lab to power a Mazda RX-9 sports car? Might the rotary instead be revived as a range extender for an electric car? However it plays out, we’ll cherish memories of the rotary rockets created at Racing Beat.